CHAPTER XIV
HAMATH THE GREAT
Now that the French railway system has at last extended its operations into northern Syria, the old cities of Homs and Hama will doubtless soon lose much of their naïveté and Oriental color and become filled with dragomans who speak a dozen languages and shopkeepers who have a dozen prices for the unwary tourist. Up to the present, however, the district has been little touched by Western civilization, and we saw there a picture of Syrian life and customs, and especially of unspoiled Syrian politeness, not to be found in more accessible cities.
We traveled from the seaport of Tripoli to Homs in a big yellow diligence, drawn by two horses and three mules, and driven by a couple of unkempt brigands who, in the absence of a sufficiently long whip, urged on their steeds by throwing heavy stones taken from a well-filled bushel-basket which was kept under the seat. The Syrians ordinarily throw like girls, and with as good an aim; but these men, while the coach was rolling and creaking like a ship in a storm, could strike the left ear of the farthest mule without any danger either to its own skull or to the other animals.
This ugly, noisy conveyance, which took us sixty miles in eleven hours, seemed quite out of place as a part of the Syrian landscape, and we noticed that it surprised the rest of the country as much as it had us. The camels were the most astonished. Along the road would be seen approaching a distant caravan, led by a white-bearded old man riding a ridiculously small donkey. Behind him, the long line of great animals walked and chewed in a slow rhythm, and looked out upon the world with a solemn gaze which made us flippant sons of a young republic feel like crawling away somewhere and hiding for a few thousand years until we had acquired a little mellowness.
But our mules represented the spirit of modern progress; on a down grade, it was progress at the dizzying speed of ten miles an hour. Now, viewed from the front, a camel looks like an overgrown chicken, and when he is startled he acts just like a flustered fowl. So we had the interesting experience of frightening half to death thirty of these great, clumsy creatures, who scampered and scattered over the road in every direction except the right one, ran into one another and knocked off carefully balanced loads, and tied up the connecting ropes into intricate knots which would challenge the genius of an Alexander to untangle, while a dozen or so stalwart Arabs cursed us with a choice of vituperation not to be found in our more stolid West—cursed with a long, deep, comprehensive curse which included us and our fathers, the diligence’s father and mother and distant relatives, and laid special emphasis upon the awful destruction which was sure to overtake the religion of the off mule.
About an hour’s journey from Tripoli there is a very old pool of sacred fish, references to which are found in works of travel as early as the sixth century. According to the present tradition, the souls of soldiers who have died fighting for Islam are reincarnated in these fish. The Moslems accordingly hold them in the greatest reverence; and if anyone, particularly if a Christian, should harm them, he would almost certainly be torn to pieces by an infuriated mob. While thousands of men and women in the neighboring villages may be suffering the pangs of hunger, wealthy zealots will buy great piles of bread for the fish; often, indeed, they provide in their wills for a certain number of loaves to be thrown each week into the pool. The fish, which are about a foot in length, are fat and bloated as a consequence of this over-feeding, and are unspeakably ugly in form and color. We estimated that there were between four and five thousand of them in the little pool; and it was a sight not soon to be forgotten, as they crowded after the crumbs which we threw them, pushing and fighting so that they were often forced quite out of their element and for many square yards the water was completely hidden by the loathsome, wriggling mass.
After eight hours’ drive along the valley that leads from Tripoli into the interior, a sudden turn of the road brought into full view the great plain of northeastern Syria. We were entering this through a break in its western wall, the pass which divides Lebanon from the Nusairiyeh Range, inhabited by its cruel, half-pagan tribes. At our right, the southern margin of the plain was distinctly marked by the abrupt ending of Anti-Lebanon and of the nearer Bikaʿ. The place where the central valley of Syria opens suddenly to the broad expanse of wheat country was known of old as the “Entering In of Hamath,” and was the northernmost point to which the Kingdom of Israel ever extended.[57] At the left, low hills rise slowly up to the horizon; in front, the plain rolls out to the unseen desert and the ruined palaces of Palmyra.
It is one of the world’s greatest battlefields that lies below us, so vast that Waterloo and Gettysburg might be fought in different corners and hardly see the smoke of each other’s cannonading. But no modern conflict has engaged such hosts as were drawn up here in martial array. They came from the desert capital, came up from Palestine and Egypt by way of the Entering In of Hamath, came as we have come, through the narrow pass leading from the Mediterranean. Back at the beginning of wars, the trained armies of Egypt fought the Hittite and the Chaldean here. After Babylonian and Persian, Jew and Syrian and Greek had become mere subjects of imperial Rome, it was here that Zenobia, the beautiful, talented, ambitious queen of Palmyra, received her crushing defeat at the hands of Aurelian. Here, centuries later, Crusader and Saracen battled for the land they both called Holy; here chivalrous Tancred led his armies and valiant Saladin won decisive victories.
Two things stand out from the general brownness of the plain. Just below us is the dazzling white acropolis of Homs, and ten miles to the south is the deep blue of the lake once called Qadesh, the “Holy,” which was dammed up in its little valley by a long-vanished race and worshiped before history began.